Online e-cigarette retailers are ignoring rules protecting minors, new research finds

To prevent teens from becoming addicted to tobacco, Congress took two steps in 2020 to prevent minors from pretending to be adults to purchase vaping products: Banning e-cigarette sites from delivering through the U.S. Postal Service and requiring any delivery. The service they use to check the identity of the recipient.

The state of California added its own twist that year, banning most flavored tobacco products. The ban did not explicitly cover online sales, but the city of San Diego is one of the few local governments to pass laws to eliminate potential loopholes.

Researchers at UC San Diego, Cal State San Marcos and Stanford Test how well these protections work. If the results in San Diego are any indication, they’re not working at all.

The team lined up eight pairs of adults to purchase flavored nicotine vaping products from 78 online retailers in October 2023. Each team placed two identical orders from each retailer; One buyer ordered from San Diego and the other from a different city. It’s a different city in San Diego County, with no clear restrictions on online distribution of flavored e-cigarettes. They required delivery by Postal Service on each order if offered.

Ideally, given the state’s ban on the sale of flavored e-cigarettes, researchers found that none of the 156 orders were delivered, and certainly none were delivered by the Postal Service. Otherwise, buyers within the city of San Diego would have to come up empty-handed, at least given the city’s outright ban on flavored e-cigarette sales.

And even if these measures failed, at least every recipient’s ID would have to be checked upon delivery to ensure they were underage.

The results of the study, Published online Monday Journal of the American Medical Assn. Research by showed that more than two-thirds of buyers had successfully purchased flavored e-cigarettes; This includes almost 70% of buyers in the city of San Diego – again, the study found, where these sales were expressly prohibited.

The study found that 80 percent of successful deliveries were made by the Postal Service, which was not supposed to carry any of them. An additional 9% came from services like UPS and FedEx that have policies against delivering tobacco products.

Finally, 93% of deliveries are completed without the need to verify the recipient’s age. According to the research, in the vast majority of cases, products are left without any interaction between the buyer and the deliverer. And in only one case did the delivery driver scan the recipient’s ID, as required by federal law.

“These results demonstrated widespread noncompliance with age verification, shipping, and flavored tobacco restrictions among online tobacco retailers,” the study authors wrote.

The authors also acknowledged that they only examined sales in one county. But this county has some of the toughest anti-tobacco measures in the country.

Eric Leas, assistant professor and director of research at UCSD Tobacco E-commerce LaboratoryIn his statement, he said that online sales of e-cigarettes are the largest and fastest growing sector of the tobacco industry.

“Brick-and-mortar stores have long-standing surveillance systems that help enforce the law, but we do not have a system for online retailers,” Leas said. “The results of this study highlight the need for greater security measures.” Oversight and enforcement of online tobacco retailers.

Representatives of the Vapor Technology Assn., a trade group for the e-cigarette industry, and the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Assn., which promotes e-cigarettes, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday. Both groups opposed banning flavored e-cigarettes and argued that vaping is a safer way to consume tobacco than smoking.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “No tobacco product, including e-cigarettes, is safe, especially for children, teenagers, and young adults.”

The latest survey by the CDC and Food and Drug Administration found that although vaping remains the most popular form of tobacco use among minors, the number of middle school and high school students who say they currently vape is also increasing. fell sharply From 2023 to 2024.